


Three Kisses Shion Received and One He Gave

by fencer_x



Category: No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-19
Updated: 2011-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencer_x/pseuds/fencer_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Tis better to give than to receive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Kisses Shion Received and One He Gave

I. _"O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!"_

Shion winces as his mother applies the antiseptic, grunting his discomfort but not crying out or pulling away; he deserves this pain, it's what he had coming. He has acted brashly, like a child from one of the standard courses, resorting to physical violence to release his emotions rather than reining them in and remaining calm, hashing things out with fists and punches rather than words and logic.

"What on earth would you get into a fight about, Shion?" his mother prods, disapproval and worry coloring her voice, and her frown deepens at his reticence--but better for her to be confused and disappointed thinking he simply was dragged into some boyish brawl than to have that frown shift into one of discomfort, disgust, pulling away and putting distance between the two of them when they were all the other had now.

She sighs softly, complacent and accepting, realizing Shion isn't going to open up to her on this occasion, that he's going to be stubborn and unyielding tonight and that pressing him for an explanation will only prompt him to pull in on himself even more. She gently smooths a hand over the bandages she's applied to his hands and arms and strokes a finger over the bruise purpling just under his left eye. "You'll have to just bear this one."

He grunts his understanding. "It's fine…"

She takes his hands in her own, rubbing her thumbs over his swollen knuckles, and gives them a gentle squeeze, being careful not to disturb the bandages. Something stirs in his chest at the action, and he can hear her in his mind, spilling love and acceptance and forgiveness into him--through their palms warm and dry against each other. He wants to shout and cry and be a child and tell her it's nothing like what she thinks, that he's different and something's wrong, but at the same time he's so scared to lose this sense of being home, of having someone love him unconditionally--he can't bring himself to say a word.

But when she leans forward and kisses his cheek, brushing her lips over the bruise and whispering a prayer for the pain to go away quickly, he can't help but hold out a ray of hope that if anyone can accept him for who he is, what kind of person he's afraid of growing to be--the kind of person that girls shy away from and other boys tease him for--then perhaps it might be his mother.

* * *

II. _"And both were young, and one was beautiful: And both were young -- yet not alike in youth."_

She tells him it's his birthday present, and while he feels horrible for doing so, he can't help but compare it to the coming storm and finding it wanting.

Her lips are dry and warm where they brush lightly against his cheek, there and gone again, light as a breath of wind and such a stark contrast to the powerful gusts that whip up around him as he dashes home through the opening chords of the powerful orchestral typhoon creeping in dark and imposing over No.6.

He can understand the feelings behind it on the most basic of levels--after all, Safu had explained it quite succinctly, and as she's far more knowledgeable on the inner workings of the human nervous system than Shion, he has no reason to distrust her judgement. But all the same, he gets the feeling that Safu isn't being as truthful as she could be, that beneath all of the jargon and complicated explanation is some sort of emotional bond she is seeking to form with Shion, and he finds it just shy of uncomfortable. He doesn't want to be pushed into deepening a relationship he sees nothing more than friendship in--so why has Safu taken this step? Or is it perhaps Shion who is reading too much into it? If his mother can kiss his cheek and it be an expression of her affection and filial love, can Safu not do the same and have it be an expression of her platonic love?

Still, he does feel like he's being quite rude to Safu, albeit without her knowing, as he makes a break for home, laughing out loud, bright and brash, at the rain pelting his face and soaking his present from Safu's grandmother through. He doesn't mean to ruin the sweater, but he can't bring himself to miss even an instant of this storm. He wants to feel it in his bones, wants to shiver with the rumbling thunder and feel the hair on the back of his neck spike with each lightning strike. He wants to feel the excitement and joy of living with each gust of wind stronger than the next, drowning out his shouts until he's too hoarse from trying.

It's a far better present than Safu's kiss, and he wishes he had someone to share it with.

* * *

III. _"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."_

It isn't as if he's stupid, or nearly as ignorant or oblivious as Nezumi likes to tease. It's only that his better judgement leaves him in the heat of the moment, and he's never thought himself the type to be singled out, approached, propositioned, seduced. He's never been that--never _wanted_ to be that. It's always been head-down, face-forward, and march to the beat that's been drilled into his head, swearing unwavering loyalty and doing as he's told, for the good of himself, his loved ones, and his fellow citizens.

But out here, he's realizing it's different. It's rawer, more real--and more dangerous for it. He thinks Nezumi must be a wreck inside, if he's constantly on edge worrying that Shion will wander off the beaten path and into the arms of a street gang or a rogue mugger looking for an easy target.

So he spares a thought, a whisper of apology in his mind, when he feels his balance giving way and falls, almost willingly, into the woman's arms, jerked into an alley and offered to _play_.

She touches him--his hair, strokes his face, all things Nezumi has done to him before, welcome then as much as they are unwelcome now. Nezumi is Nezumi, unwavering and unchanging at his core and so Shion trusts him explicitly in body and mind, but this woman is part of a world he is not yet familiar with and may never grow comfortable with, and she is _touching him_ and this is so beyond _not okay_ that Shion can't move a muscle, can only dumbly parrot her words back at her while he tries to regain his breath.

But then, too fast, her lips are on his, and she's shoved a tongue into his mouth and stroked it against his own--and she tastes of tobacco and some nasty, sour, bitter combination like rotten grapes and liquid perfume. He braces his hands against her shoulders and gives a might shove, coughing like he's had a fit and wiping his mouth, licking the dirty sleeves of his coat in a futile effort to rid his mouth of the vile taste he's just been violated with.

He trips over something, sprawling backwards, and out of the corner of his eye he only belatedly realizes it is a _corpse_ and what the _fuck_ has he gotten himself into? Why is every corner of this town oozing death and dirt and disease, how can these people truly stand it all, with No.6 so tantalizingly close, beckoning them inside, urging them to better themselves, apply for registration, yank themselves up out of this dark sinkhole and into the light?

But now the woman's hands are on him again, rubbing and groping and draping themselves around his shoulders, her foul breath in his ear urging them to _continue_ , and it is the most beautiful thing he's ever heard when a melodic voice dripping with calm amusement asks if he can't have Shion back--being as Shion is _his_.

He tries--and fails--to ignore the way every nerve in his body sits at attention, alert and eager at the casual possessiveness in Nezumi's tone, as if this is the most natural thing in the world: the sky is blue, the grass is green, and Shion is Nezumi's to do with as he pleases, and he presently pleases to have him _back_. He is again struck by the stark contrast between the possession the woman tried to claim with her kiss and the way it's so flippantly demanded by the jut of Nezumi's hip in his stance, shoulders slumped and smirk brashly confident. He is as much a part of this place, a natural fixture, as the rusted bins at the back of the alley and the stray mutts slinking about the stalls hoping for a scrap to eat; he belongs, and Shion doesn't.

He doesn't belong anywhere now--except with Nezumi.

* * *

IV. _"お休み　言葉届くように、さよならの代わりに言わせて" // "I pray that my 'good night' reaches you; let me say that, instead of 'goodbye.'"_

He hates lying to Nezumi. He's bad at it for one, but for another--he feels like Nezumi is one person who deserves to hear the truth, to never be pandered to or patronized, and he trusts Shion implicitly, so to lie, about even the most mundane of things, seems like a betrayal of that trust.

After all, Nezumi would not lie to him. He may not be entirely truthful--may hide things, or refuse to answer questions out of some misplaced sense of needing to protect Shion from all the slings and arrows the world might toss their way, but he would not stand in front of Shion, would not look him in the eye and speak falsities. Nezumi is true, if not good--and Shion trusts in the truth of Nezumi more than the good in him.

So, he hates lying to Nezumi. He hates it--but justifies it by convincing himself that, on some level, Nezumi would be proud of him. He would look at Shion, at all that he's become in his few months outside the womb of No.6 in which he'd been cocooned (Nezumi would say _trapped_ ) his whole life, reborn anew in the rusting, decrepit ruins of the Western Block--and be proud that he was finally adjusting, growing, adapting. Lying is just another way to protect yourself, he would say--and he'd be mostly right.

But logical and sound as his reasoning is, it does nothing to still the pang of regret that pierces his chest when Nezumi cuts the silence that settles between them after Shion kisses him--light and innocent, soft and unassuming, absolutely nothing like Nezumi deserves or Shion wants to give him--and prods with a knowing smirk _That wasn't a 'thank you' kiss, right?_ , opening the floor for debate, holding the door open for Shion and inviting him to clarify his reasoning, because friends don't kiss friends after coffee but before bed and on the lips without reason, without _wanting_ something--to express something, to confirm something, to remind themselves of something.

Still, his lips move of their own accord, mumbling something about _good night kisses_ that likely sounds just as ridiculous to Nezumi as it does to Shion himself, but the words have been spoken, the lie has been laid, and there is no going back.

It _is_ a good night kiss, he reasons with himself--but perhaps that night won't break into a dawn that they can meet together, perhaps it will continue, and all they will have in the future are these final few hours of dark and quiet and closeness to remember one another by. Maybe Shion will never kiss another soul again, and Nezumi will be enshrined forever in his lips, somehow immortal and undying in this manner. That might be nice, he thinks, if a bit morbid.

He reflects, in the darkness, listening to Nezumi breathing next to him, his heartbeat a constant, comforting reminder that he is alive and close enough that Shion can enjoy this--that he will regret leaving this for last. Time is fast closing in on him, and he is tempting fate by even waiting out this final night--but he wishes, in a dark corner of his mind, that Nezumi might roll over on their thin, cramped little mattress, and Shion will feel as much as hear his heartbeat rising, his breath coming faster, will shiver as fingers reach around and across, exploring under the sheets all that they dare not broach under lamplight.

But he can't have that--has never thought to ask for it, and now likely never will. All he has is the memory of Nezumi's lips against his own--the first time he has ever kissed someone with thoughts far from platonic buzzing inside his head. Nezumi is smooth and experienced and worldly and probably thought it nothing special at all, simply Shion being his usual air-headed self and doing something inappropriate without realizing it; he wishes he had time and opportunity to show Nezumi how very wrong he is.

He wishes that their first and final kiss hadn't been a lie, wishes that Nezumi had called him on it, wishes so many things that his mind is an aching mess and his head throbs with unshed tears at the unfairness of it all. No.6, Safu, the bees, his mother, his whole _life_ \--and Nezumi. Perhaps Nezumi most of all.

He shifts on the squeaky bed and rolls over onto his side, staring at Nezumi in the darkness, even though he can't make out more than a vague outline. He can feel the body heat, though, hear his breathing and his heartbeat, and it's enough.

"...Stop staring at me and go to sleep already," comes a gruff voice, rough with sleep and something else. Shion wonders if he can see in the dark, or if he's just that sensitive to being watched--he's an actor, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. "If you're not tired, at least roll over and pretend."

Shion gives a small nod which Nezumi probably can't see and adds a noise of assent before shuffling over and flopping down to face away from him. Pretending is something he's become quite good at, and if this is the last request of Nezumi's he can comply with, he is more than happy to do so.


End file.
